NYLP: Welcome to the New York Launch Pod the New York Press Club award winning podcast highlighting new startups businesses and openings in the New York City area. I’m Hal Coopersmith and this episode we speak to Jenny Fleiss. Jenny is the co-founder of Rent the Runway and now the co-founder of Jetblack, a personal shopping service with the backing of Walmart. And we talk to Jennay about what’s that like with Jenny.
Jenny: We are part of an incubator and we’re the first company in that incubator. And so thinking about how does that work and how is that structured effectively within a large business is something I’m passionate about.
NYLP: We also what exactly Jetblack is and why they started right here in New York, the future, that’s right the future of shopping and retail, and a whole lot more. So let’ s go to the interview
So you co-founded Rent the Runway in 2009, 10 years ago. The world was a lot different back then. One of the things that was interesting about Rent the Runway, there are many phenomenal things, but that you were really a pioneer in the sharing economy. People didn’t see it coming. People must have thought it was crazy back then. Now it’s all over the place, whether it’s Uber or sharing a car, AirBnb, sharing a room, Rent the Runway, clothing. What were you seeing back then that a lot of people were not seeing?
Jenny: Yeah, the world has definitely changed a lot. And in the last 10 years, you know, I remember when we started Rent the Runway and you had Zipcar was like a thing. Right? And so you saw in some industries like cars, how you’d gone from buying cars to Avis Budget, kind of that form of rental car. Just something like Zipcar. Now, we’ve gone even further with Uber where you have these kind of fractional day by day sharing of vehicles, but I think that was a tip off as was Netflix, kind of the transition of video content that did help us think of some of the macro trends around the sharing economy. Though of course it’s on steroids in the time since. Starting Rent the Runway came from a couple of trends that my co-founder Jen and I observed. One was just social media and how much social media had changed the pressure to constantly look your best, turnover your wardrobe, the fact that everything you did was shared amongst a broader group of people. So it made it that much more important what you put on and went and how you dressed, what you looked like every single day. So we heard this phrase, Facebook kills outfits. This idea that the moment you wear something you were photographed in it, it’s shared on social media and you can’t repeat that outfit. So that felt like it makes a lot of sense for consumers to rent clothing from that perspective. Something else that we heard from people was that they were going to a lot of events when they were in their twenties, and that’s the moment when they also weren’t making a lot of money. And as a result, they would maybe go to Zara, H&M, Forever 21. They found these other solutions or they would borrow clothing from a friend, maybe they bought something at a store and returned it and they kept the tags on when they wore it. Right? So you found these other solutions in ways that people were trying to solve problems that they faced in their life. And Rent the Runway came out of talking to consumers and understanding some of those pain points. But I do remember being at a conference in 2009 at Wharton and someone asked me what trend did I think was going to exist in the next five years and I said, the sharing economy and rental, and people laughed, literally laughed and it is amazing to think that no one would ever laugh to hear that now. But how much the world has changed in that time and I think consumers are overall smarter and smarter and being a smart consumer is cool and expected and something people are proud of. Right. To me the sharing economy is smart. It’s smart utilization of resources and so that’s why I think it has had such a longstanding kind of power and it will continue to.
NYLP: Well, the sharing economy is definitely smart and people are adapting to it now, but you were seeing these little things kind of add up and then you put it together and people literally laughed at you, how did that happen?
Jenny: Whenever something is still early and new, of course there are naysayers and the idea of like, I think of Airbnb, you’re sleeping in someone else’s bed, right? That sort of concept of could, can you think that dramatically about how the world could change in a short period of time? Everyone getting access to a black car with Uber I think those things can be hard to realize and fully envision.
NYLP: But you saw it.
Jenny: I think, you know, we saw it through the lens of consumers. We ourselves were consumers and in our twenties who wanted great things to wear. So from our perspective, a lot drawing on our own life experiences, we related to the Facebook kills outfit phenomenon, this idea that I did want awesome, great things to wear every day and it did make me feel great and confident when I had something great to wear. So that it would be really powerful if we could rent clothing. And so I think when you have an idea that resonates with you as a consumer, that’s fascinating and that’s how I started both businesses. So Jetblack, also the business I’m starting, on drew from problems and pain points that I had as a busy mom. I have three kids. And so I think a diverse set of entrepreneurs addressing problems they face in their life can lead to these big unlocks. And then you think of the macro economy and trends like social media or smart consumption, eco-friendly, people investing in experiences more than they are in ownership. So you kind of pair those like there’s a consumer pain point and a need with the macro trends and that’s where I think my magic and lightening in a bottle can strike like Rent the Runway did.
NYLP: So you alluded to the reason why we’re here. You’re founder of Jetblack. What exactly is Jetblack for people who do not know what it is?
Jenny: Jetblack, is personal shopping over text message and voice. Increasingly, I think voice will be used more and more over time. The way it works is you text us anything you want to order. It could be laundry detergent, it could be a birthday gift, it could be a designer handbag. So it runs the full gamut and we deliver it to you within a couple of days, often same day. We deliver in shopping bags instead of boxes, which are annoying, cumbersome. We aggregate your items in kind of a single shopping bag, we do gift wrap, we do easy returns. So it’s meant to add ease and efficiency to your life. We store all of your preferences. So the moment you’ve ordered laundry detergent or paper towels, the next time you text us paper towels, it’s just great. Your order’s confirmed for Bounty 12 pack of paper towels and it’ll be there later today. It’s meant to winnow down the sea of options that the Internet has given us and make it much more efficient for people to place orders. We store your credit card information, we store key addresses. You can just refer to the fact that I need new sneakers for Jake. And Jake is my four year old son. It knows that the last size I’ve ordered for him as a size 10 toddler. So I will suggest a size 11 toddler and probably a similar brand as last time. So I think the more you can do to winnow down the sea of options and also to be on the ready to answer questions about products that people have. So another pain point that we’re addressing is if you are buying let’s say a stroller for your child and maybe you’ve never bought a stroller before, you might want to understand does it have a sunroof or have a specific question. And rather than leaving a consumer to read blogs and go on Facebook groups and reviews, and Q and A’s, we can actually be on call to answer the question over text message for them. So simplifying shopping for you.
NYLP: Sounds amazing. Who is this product targeted for?
Jenny: Sure. So to start with, we’ve targeted parents. We are New York only just to begin and..
NYLP: New York only, I love that.
Jenny: New York only of course. This podcast is very appropriate. No, I think for us parents are in this moment in life where you’re more time-starved than ever and you also have more new categories of products you need to purchase and therefore the need to ask questions and learn about new types of products is much higher. So we felt that the value we could offer to this specific target demo and group was greater versus any other demo to get started. But I do think over time everyone wants to save time. Everyone is time starved and time strapped. I think conversational commerce will be more a part of everyone’s life using texts, using voice and so I this is applicable to everyone.
NYLP: Well New York only, at least to start, you’re dealing with probably the most demanding consumer there is. How have you been working through that?
Jenny: So I think both for Rent the Runway and for Jetblack it’s really interesting to learn from consumers in New York, often, San Fran and L.A. who are often very tech forward and forward thinking in terms of their adoption of behaviors. So I’ve loved kind of using this, you know, this is my backyard. I know this consumer very well. I am this consumer. So I think both from a relatability perspective, as well as the ability to get consumer insights and feedback on a very regular basis. Talk to my consumers, do focus groups. I think that’s one reason for the focus on New York. But I also like playing in this world where the expectations are really high. If I can satisfy a New York consumer, I can satisfy pretty much anyone is how I think about it. So at the other thing that’s been great about working with the New York consumer, they often uncover really interesting products as well. So when consumers ask us for products, which happens over text sometimes people might be like a screenshot of something they want and they send us the screenshot and they want us to order it. That helps us learn and build our catalog as well. And if we are trying to win over the sea of options for the best travel stroller to serve up to a customer, it’s really powerful for us to always be in the know of what kind of micro influencers are shopping for and to discover new brands in that way. So I think it’s let us kind of service at the top and highest level of expectations and it’s let us uncover some really interesting brands.
NYLP: So let’s say, there’s the stroller that everyone has today and then it switches to the next stroller. How do you stay ahead of that trend and also work out the supply chain for those types of strollers?
Jenny: Yeah, so, you know, first of all, we are a wholly owned and funded by Walmart and Walmart owns jet.com and a bunch of other fantastic businesses and they’ve got a great merchandising capability. So we’re able to pipe in and leverage that information as one piece of it. But also this customer base that we have may tip us off to new brands and products. We also have a team of merchants here who is culling kind of the map of their trade shows. They’re looking at the best of the best baby boutiques and stores in town. And what we’ve actually done is we’ve built a network of local stores that we rely on as partners, and we have e-commerce partners as well. And with those products are products that we get updates from the brands proactively and that will kind of rely on and trust for our consumer.
NYLP: So let’s say I’m going with the stroller. How does Jet make money? Is it off of the merchant? You have a subscription model, which people participate? What is the revenue model for Jetblack?
Jenny: We do charge a monthly subscription or a membership fee. It’s $50 a month and that includes shipping, which is rush shipping. Fast shipping includes gift wrap. It includes easy returns. You just leave them with your doorman. We pick it up, we handle all the hassle factor.
NYLP: Too good to be true.
Jenny: Yeah. It’s meant to say, if you can believe this saves you a couple hours of time a month, then it’s worth it for you. For this consumer, it’s a couple of hours of babysitting and it’s a couple hours of their time. And that’s the biggest luxury. I think these days, time is the biggest luxury.
NYLP: Is text shopping the future? Is that how people will shop in the future? Why is this better than what people are doing now?
Jenny: We’re at the forefront in the earliest stages of continuing to learn about this new consumer behavior and what I found and really believe in is consumers will shop across a variety of platforms and it’ll be this collage of all the pieces. You hear the word omni channel a lot, right? And I think omni channel, you think of like clicks and bricks, physical stores and online or a physical store as an app. And I think that definition we’ll just expand to include text and voice and maybe virtual reality. And depending on the specific use case in your life, one of those platforms will be most efficient. And depending on that, that’s what the customer will use and it will be up to the businesses and the brands to make it as seamless as possible for you to transition from one to the next to the next. So if you think of Rent the Runway, we have an e-commerce site, we have an app, we have a physical store. I as a customer can enter any of those experiences and immediately have my preferences, my order history, my sizes all saved for me so that I can be as efficient as possible and I think then of a business like Walmart, where they have physical stores, they have a website, they have an app, they actually have a few different apps and if you know they leverage voice and they leverage text, in addition to that, how do they all come together to just make the customer shop in a seamless, super efficient way? Where I think text is most powerful are a couple of things. One is the ability for you to mind dump. That’s just what I call it. These to do’s that you have and voice is actually quite good for this too. Paper towels, laundry detergent. I might be in the middle of a meeting and I remember that I need to clean my house tonight because someone’s coming over for dinner and I’m out of Windex. And I just text Windex and get it off my plate. It used to be that people shopped in a way where they made kind of these weekly shopping lists and they just went once a weekend and they bought like they did the big shop. That’s how it was when I grew up. It’s not like that anymore. You shop on- demand, you’re used to instant gratification. You’re trained as a consumer to be able to get things last minute. And therefore sometimes you don’t think about it until the day of that you’ve run out of something and you really need it and as a result, I think it can really occupy your mind. If you have to put it on that to do list, then also check out later that day if I can just get it off my plate, that’s where I think text and voice can be very powerful. And then the other example is in asking the specific question that you want. So if I’m searching for the answer to a very specific question, my kid has a peanut allergy or you know, I need to make sure that the stroller fits in the overhead bin for my travel trip. Then I can ask the direct question and fork it over to someone else, let them do the research or be on the ready to answer it and not have to research it myself.
NYLP: I can understand Walmart and a lot of other retailers’ interest in texting and omni channel and all the things that you talked about. But one of the things that, while preparing for this interview that was interesting to me that came up is, what is Walmart’s interest in the upper end, New York, difficult Manhattan consumer? Because it seems like it’s a little bit different than what Walmart’s been doing historically.
Jenny: You know, historically Walmart’s values and mission is, is always been around saving families time and enabling them to experience the best life they can with their families. So I think of Jetblack’s mission is very similar to time and the qualities of value are relevant to every consumer. You know, we see even amongst high end consumers, you want a good deal or the best value. And that’s another way I think we can save consumers time is like see some price comparison in price shopping, which we try to do also. And in fact, Jetblack will often encourage you to shop paper towels, get it that day versus stopping at the local drug store to pick up the paper towels and you would have probably paid 1.5 times the price. So I think it fits in with the overall mission and value statement. Walmart is always interested in growing its consumer base and learning about other consumer targets and consumer segments. Certainly the Jet acquisition pushed them deeper into an urban demo and urban consumer, a higher net worth customer than they had previously before. But there are so many markets that Walmart has had for long periods of time that have customers in a similar demographic to the ones that we’re targeting as well.
NYLP: And the reason why I asked that is because I think the stroller that someone’s using in Manhattan is probably different than the stroller that Walmart’s used to selling. Obviously you have the backing of Walmart and their power. Have there been any issues in terms of getting the cool New York stroller that everyone wants, that the influencer wants?
Jenny: For certain products, it’s different products that people want depending on where you live, what city, what demo, what persona type you are, you know, it’s not just income level that changes these variables. Paper towels, cleaning products everyday living. The place where Walmart I would say has like their, it’s their bread and butter. Those don’t vary all that much, honestly. Like the size that someone can have in their home of a paper towel unit versus in Texas that they may be able to store. That definitely can be different. Certainly when you get into specific fashion items or a more just discretionary items that you might purchase. There is a difference and I think it’s just about mapping out all of those decision points, decision trees and profiles. But I’ll give you another example. One of our top selling high chairs is an Ikea highchair and it’s super cheap and our consumer happens to love it for second homes or for their parents’ house, you know, the kid goes over to the grandparents’ house and then they have the extra high chair there. So I think that’s still a very relevant product type across many demos. When we’re talking to brands and making brand partnerships and relationships, you know, they recognize that Jetblack, day to day, is like bring friends from the broader organization. Like you can see you’re in our office here. We’re operating as a total startup.
NYLP: It’s very cool.
Jenny: Thank you. We’re moving offices. It’s going to be even cooler. But we’re standalone, we’re separate. We’re building a separate business brand. Like Walmart is so huge it owns Bonobos, Mod Cloth, Shoes.com. You know, like all these other independent businesses as well. So I think you can’t think about it as Walmart, but as its own separate brand.
NYLP: It seems like you kind of live the entrepreneur’s dream. You started Rent the Runway from business school. It grew to what it is today, a major force in the world of pioneer, of the sharing economy. It’s amazing. It seems like you had the sweetest gig of all time. I mean, what attracted you to this space to come to Jetblack to start this over again?
Jenny: It’s a great question and think I’m masochistic or something honestly, because it’s really frigging hard to go back to the earliest stages. I think I forgot how hard the earliest stages are, even I blanked out that part of my memory. Rent the Runway was a dream journey and I’m still very lucky to be on the board and connected to that team, very close with my co-founder still, so it doesn’t feel like I’ve fully left. I think that’s part of what makes it okay for me mentally because I still love and care about that business like a child, honestly. For me, I’ve always loved the earliest stages of starting a business where you hit on a consumer pain point, you problem solve, you try a bunch of things, you throw things against the wall, some don’t stick, some do. You’re making so much change and so much progress on a daily basis and just the iteration is just super, super fast. The connectivity to the consumer is so close. I had always wanted to go back into the trenches of that early stage and it was just the right timing on a couple of fronts. You know, I think when I left Rent the Runway, I was in a moment where there’s the senior team who I helped hired was like a fantastic team. I mean we have the best team at Rent the Runway and it was just great to see that they were grooving and it finally felt like what it would be like, it would be okay, for me to go on and do my next thing and have this business in such great hands. But then timing is everything. Mark Lore reached out. Mark had started diapers.com which is Quidsi. It was acquired by Amazon and then started jet.com which was acquired by Walmart. And he had been an advisor of mine when I was trying to learn about logistics at Rent the Runway because I led logistics for a considerable period of time and I had stayed in touch with him and really always thought of him as a visionary, an amazing entrepreneur and someone who at some point I would love to work with and so he reached out for the opportunity to co-found Jetblack and so Mark is my co-founder. This is actually in many ways his vision. I’ve certainly had a specific take and had a ton of input in shaping and crafting it, but the chance to work with him was a piece of it. The chance to be a part of this new day of Walmart where they’re really gunning to innovate. You’ve got a great leadership team that is ready to innovate, making huge strides and clearly the Jet acquisition, the Flip Cart acquisition are great indicators of that, was a place that I felt like I could add a lot of value and impact, in terms of my ability to leverage the kind of entrepreneurial skills and make it kind of an intrepreneurial push and have the biggest impact in the world that I possibly could leveraging my skill set. And then I think, you know, finally just like helping them create this template for innovation. We are part of an incubator and we’re the first company in that incubator. And so thinking about how does that work and how is that structured effectively within a large business is something I’m passionate about. I think other large businesses are trying to figure that out as well. And we will see the most progress as an economy if all of these companies can figure that out and kind of had these one plus one equals three relationships where they’re taking their infrastructure and leveraging it to let the startup businesses grow as quickly as possible.
NYLP: Well, it’s the opportunity. It’s the market. It’s the fit. One of the reasons why I wanted to ask that question is because I think you’re seeing something probably, you Jenny, that a lot of people are not seeing like Rent the Runway and the sharing economy being a pioneer for that. What are you seeing in terms of the future of shopping and what you’re trying to build here?
Jenny: I think there’s a few trends that exist in the macro economy that have led us to that Jetblack is a really exciting technical asset that we’re working on building and also consumer value prop. So one thing is that consumers’ expectations of service and speed are higher than ever. It used to be that two day shipping was delightful and dazzling and now it’s like same day, same hour, white glove type experiences. And so if you think of Uber as another, you know, back to Uber, the fact that everyone can have and access this black car luxury type experience I think is that similar mentality of like how can you have that feeling in many aspects of your life. Another trend is what I’ll call hyper-personalization and personalization is a word that’s out there a lot, but what you start to realize is that because the internet has given us every option at our fingertips, that is great. And we’ve all talked about how great that is and exciting, but it just takes a lot more time to declutter that. And in a world where you think that text and voice will be big, which I, you know, which I do and I think most people would say is the importance of winnowing that down to three options. Because how much more than three can I ever serve up in a conversation that I’m having? Right? If you use, if you were like Jetblack, send me the three coolest travel strollers, or sorry if you were like, what travel stroller do I want, Jetblack? I can’t send you 20,000 results like you might see if you were to search online. That would just be impractical. So I need to figure out the way to me, maybe I ask you where you are finding question, but to get you down to that, that fewer list. Then I think the third trend is around just like the voice technology and the, and what is happening. It’s like, it’s actually getting good enough to be something that a modality that you shop with. The fact that we actually have natural language understanding, natural language processing that is letting this technology really tick and hum. We have machine learning libraries that are out there that you can plug into. And so, the advances that I think the world has made in technology are really letting that modality take shape in a new way.
NYLP: And so when you are proposing those top three options for strollers, I don’t know if we keep on talking about strollers. I don’t know why…
Jenny: I, it’s just, I don’t know. It’s an easy option that I go to because it’s a decision that parents spend so much time and I often say the time that I spent researching what stroller to buy was more than like researching which hospital to have my child. And it’s just this weird obsession of the first huge purchase and decision you make for your family and your kids.
NYLP: Right. So you’ve narrowed down all that that time. How is Jetblack going through that process? What are the inputs into that algorithm?
Jenny: It is a combination of listening and looking at blogs, talking to consumers, looking at what initial consumers asked us about strollers, which strollers did they wind up purchasing. It’s a merchandising lens. It’s taking qualitative and quantitative aspects in mind and thinking about what questions do we ask you to most quickly get you to the best fit product. So likely we know something about you to start with. We know maybe how old your kid is if you have one already. So we start that and that funnels down the list and maybe you have two kids so that that funnels down our merchandise pre-curated list. So you take maybe a hundred pre-curated strollers that we’ve read blogs, we’ve looked at our partners, we decided we looked at Walmart research and these are the ones who believe in from a hundred…
NYLP: Who’s reading the blogs?
Jenny: We have a team of merchants, right? Reading blogs going on Upper East Side moms’ Facebook group, right? Like any resource that you can imagine. We’re kind of scouring to figure out what are those hundred that we buy into, going to trade shows. I’m talking to real moms, many of them are moms themselves trying out these strollers. So you take the hundred, you say, I know that your kid is 18 months old and you have one kid. I’m going to winnow that down and that gets me to maybe 50 of them that are relevant. And then maybe there’s a refining question that we’ve determined. If you were to have gone into a specialty baby store, you go into a Walmart, you go into Buy, Buy Baby, maybe you would have asked the sales clerk something like, oh, does it have a sun shield? And that would have taken you from 50 to 10. So let’s say we decide, we’re going to ask you that. From there we then send you maybe the top three products that we’ve ranked that we think are the best fit and hopefully you pick one, you like it, we’ll send you a tagline of why do we think each of those is our choice for you. And you convert and it’s great, that item will be there. If you say you want more options, we’ll send you the next three on our list. If you have, you have another question to us. Maybe if like, eh, could this work for a second kid, I’m thinking of having one, right? Then we have those tags and we call them kind of conversational attributes. So we have attributed all of these products in our catalog in a way that we could actually serve up and answer questions for you or refine our products and filter them in a new way. Web filters will not work for text shopping or voice shopping, some of them are relevant price point, color, etc., but there’s a whole set of conversational attributes that is more akin to what you would ask someone in a store that or a more efficient way for consumers to shop.
NYLP: So based off of all the products that you have in your system or available, if I ask a question or want a certain criteria for that product, then you can give me different options based off of what I said?
Jenny: Yes, that is correct and I’m not going to, at this stage we launched and we launched just about seven months ago. So we don’t have every single question on hand and on the ready, but we have the ones that we have seen come up the most frequently that we believe are the most relevant. You know, just in the same way that if you did go into a specialty baby store, you know that sales clerk would likely be expected to have on hand the answer to most questions, but not every single one. But what we did, let’s say you have a very specific question, your kid has an allergy to some sort of fabric and you want to know if that is in that specific stroller material. We’ll research it and we’ll get back to you. I’ll say, you know what, we’ll be back to you within an hour. And we’ll go research it, we’ll figure it out. And maybe that means we have to call the manufacturer, which we do on a regular basis and answer the question for you. So it’s just saving time that that parent would have otherwise spent.
NYLP: Within an hour?
Jenny: Often, you know, I mean I gave it as an example. It might be a couple of hours, but very quickly, I mean it right? This is meant to be top tier, best in class, fast service. So for most questions it’s way less than an hour. Our average service time is far less. Text message is really powerful where if you did ask that specific question and I said, I’ll get back to you in an hour, that’s actually totally fine because you’re going to go do something. You’re used to the fact that when you text with friends, you go in, you go out and you kind of like jump in when it’s convenient for you. Patience.
NYLP: And have you come across any fun insights at least about New York or the consumers that you’re dealing with? I kind of remember this article years ago, Target knows that people are pregnant sometimes before their family does. Anything that you’ve learned because you’re getting all these insights about the New York consumer or the the Jetblack consumer?
Jenny: I mean, I think this is, it’s such a fascinating consumer. Overall the most important thing we can do though is be really careful of our customers’ information and purchase behaviors and protect their privacy because, I think a big topic right now is how that’s at risk. And I think in a world of voice, in a world of storing all this personal information and these personal preferences, you can just be overly cautious and careful of a consumer’s privacy. Trust is a big factor in the brand that we’re building. I want you to trust that the three options I give you are the best options. That the price point is good. That I’ve done my work and my research and giving you these three options. So I think privacy goes into that as well. We see interesting behaviors all the time. I think the most generalized, broad, sweeping one that I feel comfortable talking about given our focus on maintaining privacy, it’s just the frequency of use and how much consumers shop. And it could be for a toothbrush one moment and it could be for a really expensive designer gown the next moment and sometimes those two could be correlated in the exact same stream of consciousness and a stream of thought, which is really interesting to see the correlation across categories, but just the volume and the frequency of purchases and the fact that they do really come in as much more scattered way versus the weekly shop, the weekly organized list and these can confine moments.
NYLP: You can’t give me anything like New Yorkers prefer Bounty paper towels over anything like that.
Jenny: I don’t think we’re going to share those insights just yet, but, but certainly there are some and I’m glad that we will have that data for the benefit of brand partners that we work with and as we think of growing the business.
NYLP: One of the things, as we’re wrapping up, you talked about how people are demanding a premium level of service and getting the items to consumers very quickly. We’re dealing with a demanding consumer base, people who want all sorts of different things that you mentioned, gown to toothbrush. Anything in between. How were you able to deliver everything so quickly? What’s been the challenge in terms of getting everything to your customers?
Jenny: For everyday living products, Walmart has a great network. Walmart and Jet have a great network and infrastructure so that we can get those items very quickly. If they have those products, we will always give the customer the best fit product. If Walmart or Jet happen to carry it, great. If we think a better fit product for a customer is a different brand, then we will work with the brand partner on that front to get the product. If we don’t get to have a partnership, we’ll just go buy it at retail and truly act as a personal shopper. But certainly, it’s been a way in which being a part of the Walmart and Jet ecosystem has been an asset and advantage that we’re able to leverage. Jet has a new warehouse facility in the Bronx, so I’m not too far away. There is a huge set of inventory and skews that we’re able to access on a very fast, real time basis, which is pretty powerful for us. And another piece is understanding from our customer the time urgency and sensitivity. So we may be able to offer you a much broader set of options if you have no time sensitivity, which may be the case. Let’s say you’re buying a pair of shoes, you’ve got a wedding to go to next week. You might not care, as long as it gets there before that date. You’re buying a toothbrush. Maybe you’re out, you need it tonight, right? Or you’re like you’re traveling, you need it sent to that hotel that night. So sometimes just clarifying that helps us make sure that we’re giving you products that we can get to you in time.
NYLP: Like the shampoo in your shower. You always forget, I need to go to the store and then…
Jenny: And then I think what I hope we can do and build the trust in our customers over time is to remind the person proactively maybe a couple of days before like, hey, we think it’s time for you to reorder these few items based on your buying cycle in history. Consumers we find don’t really like subscribe and save and subscriptions because often it’s another thing to remember or there’s water bottles stocking up while you go away on vacation. You just don’t want to deal with that. But the idea that there was a prompt and a proactive reminder based on some even data like, okay, every day, it’s December around Christmas time, this customer just isn’t ordering, so let’s pause that period of time. But their cadence says that otherwise, it’s every month they order paper towels. So let’s ping them and remind them. We’re not doing that now. And certainly we would be like an opt in or an opt out type of feature. But I think that could be really powerful for our way to help consumers save time, get them the best fit product and not let them run out of products.
NYLP: And this is also a competitive space. I mean, you’re under the Walmart brand, Amazon behemoth in the room. A lot of other people want to go into this space. Why is this the answer? Why is Jetblack, what you’re doing the answer?
Jenny: I think the answer is like trying a lot of different things and resonating with what speaks to consumers. This is a hard, very competitive industry. There’s a lot that will shake out in the next coming years is another piece of why I’m excited to be a part of that kind of a shifting landscape and a kind of territory grab that these big players have in front of them. I think I go back to what do I identify and relate to as a consumer? What are the pain points that exist in my life? And then also making sure that exists for other consumers as well. So initial surveys and focus groups and hearing constantly that, for consumers, that shopping has become a chore, it was something to check off their list. It was something that became stressful because it was like last minute and they hadn’t found it or something that became distracting because it was taking away from time with their kids when they had to remember to place an order of some sort and thinking about what does a solution that can address these pain points. Mark and I very much both believe that you start with the customer ideal solution and you work backwards. So we’ve created a business that solves all those pain points and I think is, is truly like this premium ideal customer experience and are now in the process of working backwards of like, okay now let’s scale this and there might be things that we massage and tweak as we do that.
NYLP: And you mentioned that you forgot how hard it is to start a business from the ground up. But you brought a lot of things up that you probably do remember and a lot of wonderful experiences. Is there something that this time around that you learned from your experience at Rent the Runway that’s been really helpful in terms of building Jetblack and overcoming some of the challenges that you have?
Jenny: So many things. One reason I am glad that I went back to the trenches and I’m doing it all over as you appreciate more how much you learned along the way. I think sometimes when we were starting Rent the Runway, it was one foot in front of the next, you’re just going and doing and figuring it out as you go. So you don’t often have these moments where you pick your head up and you take stock of all you did learn or all you did achieve and so now going through it and being able to draw on those experiences and even sharing those stories or those examples with the team so that they get like, oh this is that hard. But that’s how it’s meant to be. Sometimes there is just comfort in numbers of, oh well, this is what it means. And then the story that I tell of even in a failure that we had at Rent the Runway and maybe that relates to what we’re doing here and kind of like giving you the resilience to push forward or to learn, view it as a learning opportunity. Something that comes to mind is early on at Rent the Runway we really hired all around athletes who are very flexible and I still think that’s very important in the early stages of a business because you both want people who can own and do a lot of different things because you’re being scrappy and you’re being lean. But I think it also speaks to a flexibility that is important and a start-up where you are going to iterate and tweak and change can pieces of your business model. You need employees who are open to roll with that and who aren’t going to be so fixed. And like I was, here’s my goals and here’s exactly what I signed up for him when I came here to do, but who have much more of a I’m going to just take opportunities as they come mindset they have a humble mindset. So even if being flexible means, I’m going to do something below my pay grade, they’re game for any of it. And I think still the importance of hiring that sort of person is what drives early stage start-ups.
NYLP: Getting the right people.
Jenny: Yes.
NYLP: That’s a wonderful note to wrap things up on. Jenny Fleiss thank you for stepping onto the New York Launch Pod and sharing your time with us.
Jenny: Thank you for having me.
NYLP: How do people find out more about you and Jetblack and get on that wait list?
Jenny: Go to Jetblack.com.
NYLP: You go there right now.
Jenny: Go there right now. Sign up. Enter your information and if you’re in New York or one of the five boroughs, then we’ll work on getting you in as soon as possible.
NYLP: And if you want to learn more about the New York Launch Pod, you can visit nylaunch pod.com or follow us on social media. And if you’re a super fan of the podcast, Jenny are you a super fan of the podcast.
Jenny: Of course.
NYLP: Of course Jenny’s a super fan of the podcast and if you’re listening to this, you are to please leave a review on iTunes and Apple podcasts. It is greatly appreciated and does help people discover the show.
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